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Radio station owners bid for City Paper
Thursday, October 01, 1998 By Dan Fitzpatrick, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Owners of the Pittsburgh City Paper are "seriously considering" a sale of their alternative newsweekly to the Frischling family, owners of two local radio stations.
"There is an offer on the table," said City Paper publisher and majority owner Brad Witherell."By no means is this a done deal."
A sale seems likely, though. "If everything goes through as planned, I have made up my mind to go ahead and do it," said Witherell, who founded the paper in 1991 with a Colorado partner, Andy March.
"Based on everything working out, it should be a done deal," said Gregg Frischling, general manager of WLTJ-FM and WRRK-FM and a shareholder in Green Tree-based WPNT Inc, the Frischlings' holding company.
The deal would pair a media company perhaps best known for WRRK's conservative morning radio host Jim Quinn with a free alternative weekly with a liberal editorial bent. It would also mark another change to Pittsburgh's free newsweekly market. City Paper's chief competitor, InPittsburgh Newsweekly, was acquired last year by Philadelphia-based Review Publishing.
Neither Frischling nor Witherell would disclose the amount of the Frischlings' City Paper offer. The sale could be final within three to four months, they said.
Before that, it is too early to talk about changes to the paper's editorial focus or staff, Gregg Frischling said. But Witherell said the Frischlings assured him that no such changes are planned.
"That's my first priority," Witherell said.
City Paper would be the Frischling family's first newspaper acquisition. Gregg Frischling downplayed his family's lack of knowledge in that area. "A business is a business," he said. Many of WPNT's radio competitors are branching out to other forms of media, he said, and WPNT needs to do the same if it hopes to keep pace.
The company, which recently sold a radio station in St. Louis, has made several attempts to acquire other radio stations in Pittsburgh and elsewhere. Each time, though, other bidders offered a better price.
"Things have not worked out," Gregg Frischling said.
Other shareholders at WPNT include Saul Frischling, Gregg's father, and Gregg's two brothers, Todd and Michael.
"We are not opposed to going into other businesses as long as they are good business opportunities," Gregg Frischling said.
The City Paper, he said, is a good case in point. It distributes 60,000 copies a week, up from 45,000 a year ago. Revenue has grown by 70 percent in the last year and City Paper's page count has doubled, said Witherell.
In the last year, he said, three parties, including the owners of the Philadelphia City Paper, have approached him about buying the paper.
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